I apologize if this is off topic, my intent is to help, and offer something that may be a work around.
During an upgrade from 18.1 Mate to 18.2 Mate, I got caught in “Saving installed packages” too. Pixy Yuan (pixy-bupt) #41 is right, delete everything but /home by way of sudo’ed file browser. I also delete most .xxx files - if you keep .remmina and the like - you don’t have to re-invent the wheel, but get rid of the standard system hidden files in /home/username/ Install shifted into copying files directly. No wait. Full Mate install in under 10 minutes on a Dell Lattitude D610 - Pentium M single core 1.1 gig CPU I thank my friend Jason for showing me this, many years ago, and wanted to share. NOTE - I did not have /var in a custom spot, thus the apology in the first line. Brad -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/875343 Title: Stuck at "Saving installed packages..." when using a custom /var To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/875343/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs